


Siren Song

by Fromwabetotulgeywood



Category: White Collar
Genre: (I have a love/hate thing about magical realism), Kate was a Mermaid, Magical Realism, OMG this makes sense in my brain, Other, bwtfn?, gratuitous tagging, mermaids are real
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 11:36:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10490046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fromwabetotulgeywood/pseuds/Fromwabetotulgeywood
Summary: “I can’t believe you were enchanted by a siren” he speaks.Quiet; then “Who says I wasn’t the one who enchanted her?” the lighter tenor, ever so petulant, ever so untrue, ever so mischievous, answers."Well, I guess that puts your prison break in a whole new perspective."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Season 2. Or whatever. No spoilers. Because the shows over. Been over. But I still have all this fic in my hard drive. Because imma idiot. Go Mermaids!! *dives into floor* **claymation splash of hard wood floor** (see previous Comments)

Its shaking her apart from inside her bones, her tendons might as well as be over stretched rubber bands and the skin casing her feels no more substantial than re-dried tissue paper: everything from outside just - rips.

"Please" is all she can come up with, air tripping out her mouth barely enough to hold the sound of a voice.

They gather around her, caging her; holding her together she thinks idly over the screaming need.

"Jesus" one of them swears in a deep voice and another mutters and one, one with bright blue eyes who sees her, really sees her, begins demanding: "Water. Now."

Sound shuttles and mutates inside her pain in a miasma of confused noise but footsteps thunder thru the floorboards and vibrate up into her as people race away and near and sounds of glass ware tinkle and the flush of water pushed, rushed hard thru spigots and the idea of water — water — the need for it empties her out.

More voices and she's being lifted and moved but she's a boneless limpet of a thing in this moment. Strands of her hair catch in the latches of door frames and between the press of the body of the man caring her and the walls of the narrow, long hall. They push into a small, bright white room and she is relinquished into a cold claw footed porcelain tub but here inside is already enough water to wet the bottom of it.

She comes back to herself, redolent in cool water, released but wrapped about herself in the narrow oval of the tub with a small, steady stream of water still running down and her hair floating in and out of the crease of her vision. She’s got her arms hugging herself so tightly they ache and it takes more time than she could have expected to unbend them. Her elbows bump the walls of the tub in side inches. She pulls in her elbows but straightens her arms down her sides. The tip of her tail is all the way up on her chin and flexing gently, sending slight currents fanning her mouth, sweeping fresh water brushing her tongue with every inspiration. Her tail is twisting up and over itself around her before it brushes the soft skin of her torso and it takes more concentration to relax it, every brush against her scales with the walls of the tub sending shivers up her spine then out to the ends of her so quickly she gives it up. In the stillness voices from the air finally carry undisturbed into the water.

“— imagine that it could have gone worse.”

“Sure you can. What if I had been there too.”

The first voice, the Deeper Voice, it answered with a chuckle that is more felt than heard inside the water. Water moves and waves with her breath and she feels the tininess of the reprieve but she no longer feels trapped, not now she’s got her fins and scales.

Deeper Voice’s chuckle tickles up and down her spine, so quietly she thinks she’s rubbed up her scales wrong on the porcelain again before the stillness of the water reminds her she’s not moving.

“I can’t believe you were enchanted by a siren” he speaks.

Quiet; then “Who says I wasn’t the one who enchanted her?” the lighter tenor, ever so petulant, ever so untrue, ever so mischievous, answers. Blue Eyes who knew her on sight because he knew one of her kind because he just saved her. As much as she loves every shade and tone his of sound the truth and untruth spike and scale unequivocally. Interesting; she can see his appeal. She wonders whom of her misbegotten sisters she lost to the land to this one. Then: “Yeah. She got me. … But I had her. She stayed for me.”

“Well I guess that puts your prison break in a whole new perspective” Deeper Voice adds.

Silence. It goes on this time. In it she can feel belated regret. Then the tenor, Blue Eyes, adds “Her killer is still out there.”

Her shock splashes a wave of water over the rim of the tub. Shadows paint the top of her eyelids and she pulls them up to see why. Two faces hover over her, over the water. His eyes really are so blue, bright sky tropics noon cerulean blue. She starts to speak and bubbles erupt, the last vestiges of gas tunneling up out of her lungs eagerly at the movement. Her head hits the floor of the tub as she rears back, it has been so long, but then, a breath of solid water eases away the champagne tickle left from the escaping air. She sips in the next breath, soothing herself on it.

“Woah. Easy. You’re safe. We’re watching the building. There are guards on the door” Blue Eyes assures, his voice sincere, and she hears only truth and concern. He has his hand hovering flat over the surface of the water like its a pane of glass, like he’s done this so much its a routine. It makes her wonder. Surely her sister, if free, would have taken him swimming and not… not been reduced to this… so how can he know? this?

She’s careful as she modulates tones in gratefulness, reassurance, not to put her Voice into it, so sound raises up as a caress. Both men relax. Deeper Voice leans over, his boorish tie falling loose, but she ignores it to watch him, hear how he wears his badge and his honor and his integrity in his voice as he tells her, according to the agreements and treaties, transportation is being arranged.

These modern men and their paper and ink, things that revert to pulp inside minutes of a spill, rent apart in hours of a gentle current, who build their governance on this house of cards as if it were bone and blood.

Her gaze falls back to Blue Eyes. She can’t help it. He is a thing of beauty, of discovered treasure.  He tickles a tendril of lust for taking him, for keeping him and tending him, that she can’t deny. But he’s been caught already. He belongs to one of her sisters. And he knew enough to save her. These things are all true. She floats her hand up near the surface of the water, palm flat, long fingers stretching wide until she can feel the web of surface tension lick back against the whorls of her finger pads. His hand mirrors hers in the air over the water and she can see the wreck of her sister’s snare still scattered over him, a drifting net of broken and rotting ephemera. Definitely dead, then. Shame.

Deeper Voice chokes himself on a breath and turns profile to cough, grabbing hard at Blue Eyes for balance and spinning him back away from her in the same movement. She knows the turn for what it is, his attempt at taking and claiming. Silly human. He is only trying to claim what is already caught, trying to keep what is already a treasured. She breathes in the water, tasting pipes and chemical fixing. It won’t be long now, not long until Deeper Voice has her returned safely to the release of the abyss of the ocean as promised in his papers and words. 

In Years or Days, she will walk back onto this island of man, this Manhattan, and summon the man who left her dry and high down the shores into the waves and pull him down, pull him into a crushing death inside the cold black depths. She will leave him settled inside a cage of drowned metal to feed the blind and the boneless that subsume things from above to make them part of their home below. In Years or Days.

But maybe sooner she will walk on land. Before he spun away she caught Blue Eye’s hand with a trace of her dripping finger pad down the length and creases of his palm above the surface of the water; to tie a rope to the ripped ephemera floating over him, to tie a rope to him. After all he saved her, and he is so very mischievous and fascinating. It would be rude of her to discard something so treasured to her sister. Her Dead Sister. For her Sister’s Death she would walk on land tomorrow, if she knew who to summon, who to take to for taking her sister. For this man, this man her sister walked the earth for, this man of treasure, well… if he beckons, she will sing her Siren Song.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah. And no beta. Sorry. Let me know and I'll fix it.


End file.
